Syndicate

Meta

Let’s do some real police work

And let’s do it by trying to see what the titles of the episodes can tell us.

The last couple of episodes have the titles The Dickensian Aspect and Took. It’s obvious where the former came from, and the latter, well, that kind of makes sense as well. Without looking at anything but the titles of the upcoming episodes, let’s see if we can make some kind of sense about where the crew is going in the final 3 episodes.

Clarifications, Late Editions, and -30- are the names of the last 3.

I don’t really know about Clarifications, but Late Editions could have a big double-entendre going on. There will be blood.

But I’m just stumped on -30-. Wait, Wikipedia to the rescue.

“–30–” is a journalistic term that has been used to signify “the end” or “over and out” since the Civil War when telegraphers tapped “XXX” to end transmissions (“XXX” being the Roman numeral for 30).

Well, so much for that. WPedia also said that the last episode is 93 minutes long.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Speculation based on previews is that Clarifications refers both to the newspaper practice of having to print clarifications and corrections (see the return of Terry, the PTSD vet in the previews, saying that Templeton lied about something) as well as to characters revealing things to each other. (see McNulty yanking Kima into the interrogation room).

The Previews also show what looks like McNulty before a hostile review board. And Gus is really onto Templeton’s scam, I think.

I didn’t know “-30-” either, other than as the name of a post-Avengers band Penelope Houston was in, but I googled it last week and then didn’t post because I didn’t want all the journalists to tell me “duh!” Or “ibid.” or “et al” or some other cussword.

As far as we know, and we didn’t actually see what he wrote, just the reception of it, Templeton’s piece on Terry was on the level.

It would be the ultimate irony if Terry falsely accused Templeton of lying and he got busted for it. (allow me a hee) Of course, I’m also interested in seeing if in fact, he did write the truth. Maybe we are the ones that got took on that one. He could have written a total lie but just did it in a restrained, non-purple, fashion.

I used to work at a small town newspaper (back in the day when they still used hot wax and X-acto knives to do paste up [/grandpa Simpson] and we used -30-, also when I was in college television journalism classes

VT, I worked for a statewide business paper that was still doing pasteup w/ flats, hot wax and X-actos at the very beginning of the current century. AND we only had dial-up, so I had to walk to the public library – uphill both ways! in the snow! barefoot! – to get decent access to the Internets.

Of course, I just stopped by that very publication’s new office this morning and it is swankier than swank (or at least what passes for it in this corner of the country) – exposed brick, private offices everywhere the eye turns and fancy flat-screen monitors. I guess it’s true what they say about all the $$ being in niche publishing these days.

Back in the day, when we still used revolvers instead of semi-autos, hard copy was still part of the editing process. (We were computerized, but not everyone had one. And some dinosaurs liked to give a story a first read on paper. Something about their aging eyes.) Copy got dropped on the floor in the excitement, or mixed up in other papers on someone’s desk, or whatever. -30- was important for figuring out if you’d reached the last take (page). Once upon a time there was a journalism magazine called (more), which is what you put on the bottom of takes if there was another one coming. This also helped the guy in composing whose job it was to feed stuff into the OCR machines downstairs. Yes, we sent copy down via pneumatic tubes. And we SMOKED. Right in the newsroom.

Now “take” means “opinion.” Thirty is the new 20. And I need to get my roots touched up. It is to weep.

I used to sneak into the Rice Thresher offices at night to xerox copies of my fanzine, “Cosloy Youth”. Theft of copying services being one of the standard capers of 80’s punk rock DIY publishing. Fortunately I ran the radio station so I had access to the whole media hall.